Steven Dybvad – Personal Journal – June 16, 2014

Kurt told me that certain staff members here were attempting to shut down his business class that he’s teaching. Other staff members told him that some of the coordinators were trying to stop the business class because they didn’t want the inmates to educate their selves in a way that could improve the quality and success of their future. Then I heard the Sgt. that helped Kurt put this whole class together say she heard the program director say something along the same lines, so in order to be able to keep the business class going, we would all now have to stop calling it a class, or a program and we would only be able to refer to it as an activity. These are some of the silly trivial conflicts that some staff likes to create and focus on rather than the safety and security of this prison. It would be insane to think that maybe it would be better to try to help us by providing us with some of the tools necessary to living as a functional, contributing member of society after release.
I have no doubt that this activity Kurt is teaching is helping other inmates. Every day I see more people approach him to ask him with questions and compliment him on how well the class is going. Although I’m sure Kurt probably has mixed feelings about the level of exposure he now has with many other inmates that he otherwise never would have spoken to. We both try to live under the radar, but now he’s a dot on the map so to speak. I’m not saying this is bad, it’s probably just too much, too many, too fast in a world where one tries to stay hidden.